Linux Mint 12 was released. As expected, the introduction of MGSE, Gnome 3 and MATE received an outstanding success, while the disappearance of Gnome 2 was identified by some as an important regression.

Now more than ever, people need more choice. As many Gnome 2 users will face a switch, either when older releases reach end of life, or when LMDE switches as well, it’s extremely important we continue to improve the user experience on both MGSE and MATE, while providing additional desktop alternatives (KDE being our main priority).

MGSE significantly improved post-release and received updates and bug fixes on an almost daily basis.

MATE received critical bug fixes and is now much more stable than it was in the RC and even in the stable release. The momentum it gained by being part of this release helped it tremendously. MATE is more well-known, and it’s starting to attract developers. A website was created for MATE and the code is now managed by a team, which I joined as project manager. As MATE becomes more and more full featured and as it is gaining in stability, we’re considering releasing a dedicated MATE edition.

Work on the KDE and LXDE editions started. The Linux Mint staff was increased to 3 full-time members this December in an effort to bring alternative desktop choices to users in a timely manner.

The donations we received this month were simply amazing. This is an all-time high since the creation of the project and the support we’ve been getting from the community during this release has been fantastic. The figures speak for themselves, $9,175 in total, 335 people offering help via donations, 150 sponsors, and this is just the visible tip of the iceberg, the tangible financial support! We’re also receiving patches, suggestions, ideas, bug fixes, and help in so many other ways. The IRC and forums are booming with people helping each others. There’s a lot to be proud of when you’re part of such a community. Many thanks for your support and to everyone out there in the community who help make Linux Mint better.

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155 Responses to “Monthly Stats – November 2011”

As a long time user of Mint “Gnome Edition” (currently LMDE on all my computers), I have to say I’m so disappointed with Gnome 3 that I’m thinking about switching to KDE for the first time since LM6.
Mint Team did a great job with MGSE (as you can read it all over the web), but Gnome 3 is a HUGE step backward for me.
Waiting for the KDE version.

Congrats for the GREAT job, I’m also thinking about becoming a sponsor after having been a casual donor!

Congratulations — a significant month in the history of Linux Mint! I’m an LMDE user and a Gnome-Shell sceptic, but I recognize the necessity of moving to a Gnome 3 base, so I installed Mint 12 in a separate location and took it for a spin. I’m so impressed by it that I’m using it a fair amount of the time, and I’m now looking forward enthusiastically to LMDE making the switch to the Gnome-Shell/MGSE environment.

I think you know that, despite a vocal minority (can anyone guess who I’m talking about?), all the stats and evidence points to this having been far more successful than many (I included) expected, and fully vindicates your choice of direction. So keep listening to the community, but just as importantly keep doing what you’re doing and backing your judgement, because you’re doing a fine job so far. Thanks!

Edit by Clem: Yes, you’re obviously referring to “Guy”. To be fair, both in terms of features and stability the two desktops present in Mint 12 can be seen as a regression when compared to Gnome 2. This is a fact and it’s not just one person seeing that, it’s a portion of our user base. That’s the reason why we’re working hard on MATE and MGSE and trying to provide other desktops as well.

Hard work it is and kuddos to the Mint Team for pulling that one off…
It’s still a WIP but i can feel that this is the right mix of choices for dealing with the disruptions Gnome3 generated.
As for the impatient and vindicative ones: “all come in due time !”.

Took Mint12 for a spin over the weekend. Impressed, but with some reservations over Gnome 3. Not working quite the way I am used to and took a dislike to my hardware I`m afraid. Completely crashed my Acer desktop twice, so have reverted back to Mint11 which has proved a most reliable Linux distro. Still, keep up the good work lads.

@Clem: was just curious…but has it been decided yet whether the kde version of mint will be ubuntu based or lmde based? Also, any idea of when it might be out? If it’s ubuntu based i will likely want to take it for a “spin” (lol)…Thanks…

For now, i am using ubuntu 11.10 with unity which for me i find not that bad really…but i would consider a kde mint 12 if based on ubuntu…and if not, then i look forward to a more polished mint 13 as i would very much like to “return to the fold” (mint) LOL…

What would be great if mint 13 could have just one panel on bottom like the old mint editions, perhaps improvements in the menu and nicer themes and more polish (like ubuntu currently has)…

To be fair perhaps my post earlier was a little strong and for that I apologize.

However I would like to point out to all those pointing out that Linux Mint is #1 on Distrowatch should be aware that the position of #1 was gained by Mint 11 and LMDE both of which do or do currently use the Gnome 2 Desktop Environment.

I believe this should clarify things.

Possibly the best way to view Mint 12 is not to compare it to previous releases ‘of which I am guilty’.

But to view it as a completey different distro. by doing so it would be thoroughly enjoyed no matter what the individuals feelings are regarding Gnome 3

Congratulations, I’m curious to know if you have been seeing any revenue from the DDG deal yet. I have added it to Firefox in my Mint 11 desktop. I have been trying to play with Lisa in a virtualbox and VMWare environment unsuccessfully. I’m a little leery of making the switch on my main computer right now.

I can see that it is apparently Gnome 3 that makes the changes I was so unhappy with in Ubuntu. You lose about half of the configuration tools, like Group management. Even Mint 12 was the same way if you open up system settings. I’m also unhappy with the mint menu in Lisa since you loose keyboard navigation. I have gotten used to opening the mint menu with ctrl super and typing in what I want, arrow up to the program and hit enter, program started, easy.

I do NOT blame Mint for these negative changes you guys are doing great things. I simply have to wait to upgrade or change my current workflow. I would love to get it working in a virtual environment though.

@Craig: The KDE version we’re working on at the moment is Ubuntu-based. No decision was taken yet on whether this desktop edition was to be supported by or ported to LMDE. For now, our priority is to get the KDE edition out and our target is to do it before Christmas… if it’s ready before then, I can’t tell for sure yet

@Guy: Fair point. We know for a fact Gnome 2 was the most popular desktop and this is the reason MGSE is designed the way it is, and so much efforts are put into MATE. They’re both new and they both need momentum to succeed. Obviously, in terms of maturity you can’t expect them to be on par with a desktop we’ve been perfecting incrementally since 2006. I perfectly understand that for some users Mint 11 is a better option than Mint 12. That said this release is making an important first step towards something that was inevitable and which in the future could be extremely promising.

Clem, congratulations for the achivements, I will reserve my opinion about the success of Gnome3. Just I would like to know what are your plans for KDE? There are a few strong KDE distros wonderfully tailored, easy to install and configure. In my opinion an LMDE base might not match on quality to those already in existance. KDE is becoming a beauty on its own and Kubuntu is planning a 5 LTS release and on DVD. What are you plans for this project? Thanks and congratulations again.

@Bateezuu: You can run it in virtualbox if you enable 3D acceleration. You can’t open the menu with a keyboard shortcut yet, but keyboard navigation is present and functional in mgse-menu, make sure to take the latest upgrades for this package. The deal with DDG brings revenue to both Linux Mint and DuckDuckGo and it’s a real pleasure to work with them (I don’t know if you’re involved in the DDG community, but it’s refreshing to work with them). We’ll be signing deals with more search engines in the future (eventually all of them), so there should be more options installed by default in future releases.

I was a long time Ubuntu user and I just decided to try out Linux Mint 11 about a 2 months ago after I had some hardware issues on Ubuntu 11.04… and wow! I fell in love in just about 10 minutes after my install. Today I upgrade to 12 and the love just keeps growing. You guys are doing a great job I have to say. I think the community driven approach is what is setting you guys apart from Canonical making mostly in-house decisions. All I have to say is thanks a lot. Peace.

It has been an outstanding month in Mint history……how can 3 full time developers get this much done? still lots more work to do with the Linux desktop is such a rapid state of flux, but I enjoy the fast pace of innovation and ultimately it will be the users who benefit…keep up the excellent work!

@Clem: thanks for the update…actually, i will admit i got spoiled with the previous editions of the old mint…so polished and always preferred over direct ubuntu…But i will agree that you did a great job for a first shot at the new way (gnome 3 shell) and am sure it will only get better as you go along…

I’m only staying with ubuntu for right now because i got “comfortable” with unity but looking forward to checking out the kde (ubuntu based) mint 12 also and i am sure that i will either end up on that OR Mint 13 which no doubt will be even more polished then Mint 12…

Keep up the great work…also glad to see “guy” has come around a bit (lol)….It’s all good from here…

I’m a Linux MINT user and Ubuntu 11.10. The New desktop fails whenever I sign in to MINT 12 as “GNOME” it will show for a while, I FIND a Theme that I can actually see all the letters and icons with, then it always crashes. I only use mint 12 in Gnome Classic or No Effects mode. Ubuntu 11.10 on the other hand, it works in all settings. I’m hoping the kinks are fixed soon. Thanks for a great OS and alternative to the tedious Windows minefield.

I applaud how the Mint team listens to the community and I admire your efforts of trying to make Gnome Shell more useable, but nothing can replace the practicality and efficiency of Gnome 2. I really hope MATE can penetrate into the mainstream. God speed!

I’m with you all the way. All this talk about Gnome 3 needing to mature almost makes me forget that LMDE is another project that needs much work. It’s great to see some users being able to rely on it, but I just don’t have the time to fiddle right now. I’m really looking forward to an Ubuntu based KDE as well. Mint 10 KDE looked really nice, but as you know, I had network issues with it, which unfortunately makes it a dud for me. Kubuntu 11.10 is great, and Mint will only be better.

I have high hopes that Clem will get LMDE to my liking one day, but that time has not come for me yet. It is progressing though, which is a really good thing.

Looking forward to the LMDE release with Gnome 3.2 . Currently following closely the Gnome 3.2 status in Debian Testing. It feels like it is progressing at snail’s pace and time drags. But the team’s got to do what its got to do.

PB, I’m glad KDE is meeting your expectations after some concerns at the beginning. I’m confident that a LM-KDE will be just awesome. LM-KDE could be the solution to all of those who are not having the good feeling about LM12. LM needs a solid KDE to attract more users from other distributions that are not comfortable with Unity or the Shell either.

I was starting to be pessimistic about the new path Linux Mint was heading to as I found the whole project too big for such a small developing team. The fact that 3 new full-time developers are joining the team are great news. Although I find MGSE and MATE a bit inmature, I’m sure that in a year or even in a few months both of them will be 2 full-grown projects which will make Linux Mint an even more popular distro.

All in all, Clem and the team are doing a incredibly great job. Good work guys!

While I’m happy that KDE will be the next main focus….and I’m happy for and congradulate Clem & team for great work……I’m also disappointed that KDE won’t be ported to LMDE like it was formerly talked about 6 months ago….mean what you say & say what you mean…..most of all, back up what you say with action…..be a man of your word.

I am not at all impressed with Gnome 3 and probably will not stick with any distro that does not provide a traditional desktop experience. I wish the MATE project well and hope it delivers what we need. When you are ready I hope you will produce a dedicated MATE edition of Mint so that we can all evaluate its potential.

It’s true … I have been waiting for LMDE KDE, at least that’s what I understood some months ago. The innovative JUMP is becaming a rolling distribution … avoiding upgrading/reinstalling a distro every six months. Sure … I catch the point you’ve been very, very busy these months … I appreciate your work and thank you for that, but I am sincerely disappointed. Becaming a KDE rolling distro, skiping Ubuntu to link Debian repositories directly … it sounded so nice … really, really nice. That’s a pity.

I am very happy that new LM Kde has Ubuntu-base. It is very good decision.
According me KDE is very good alternative to MGSE and Mate in current state. Especially for them which wanted to remain with previous releases Linux Mint like me.

@Andrew (40):
No offense, but your post is both hilarious and sad in so many ways – at the same time…

I don’t know if you’ve followed the forums lately, but there’s been quite strong opinions about KDE going LMDE.

I so much admire the work that Clem & Team does on Linux Mint, because the level of disappointment, complaints and criticism that fill these posts whenever a decision is taken that don’t go along with something previously stated – I just couldn’t take that without just closing down shop and say “To h*ll with it all”.

And the thing is – Things change, and not only that – they tend to change all the time, and the people that gets left behind are the ones that refuses to accept that yesterday’s truth might not have been that absolute after all… from my perspective it is the ability to realize that you might have to change your way of thinking, change your opinion about something – is where “real” greatness comes from…

@Clem: thanks to a new extension now offered on the gnome 3 (one click) extension website, there is an “auto hide the top panel” extension that works great…that means i can install Mint 12 now, keep the bottom panel with mint menu and window list on the bottom…BUT autohide the top panel, thus giving me back the extra space i wanted on top!…

So…i will be installing Mint 12 now and re-join the “fold” (lol)…

I look at this as a temporary solution until Mint 13 in which (from what i read recently) you will be able to have just the bottom panel with a revamped mint menu too with more flexibility and options…which is great news!

Just one more suggestion…if you can…try to add some more “eye candy” to mint because the one thing ubuntu does have going for it is very attractive Themes…

They use ubuntu fonts and all the applications windows look great too…especially when using the lighter theme which i think is called “radiance”…take a look at it and you will see what i mean…so if you could pretty up mint a bit i think Mint 13 along with the classic mint lower panel and menu will be a real KNOCKOUT DISTRO….

After experimenting with Mint 12, I tried put LMDE(GNOME) and xubuntu. Both were ok, but not for me. Finally I went back to Mint 11. Can’t wait to give the KDE version a spin!

I can’t imagine myself ever really using Gnome 3; I have real work to do on my computer. So, I am very happy about what has been going on with MATE! The awareness that Mint 12 has generated and Clem as the project manager. I think MATE will be the future of Linux.

Clem, it’s probably to early to say, but any plans for MATE after all the bugs are fixed and it is just as stable as Gnome 2 was.

Since MATE have to stay alive, even it’s gnome2 zombie Resurrection, then Clem, for mint sake, separate it from Gnome 3 shell! It’s making mess in the Gnome 3 system, like icons example, I have to use alacarte to remove that garbage.

Yes there are some bugs in the the LM12 release (webcam not recognised & shell freezing when Banshee is streaming audio, in my case), but Gnome 3 is still a very professional and polished user interface which deserves to become the benchmark in the near future.
We must encourage and help the team isolate these bugs and polish the release to perfection.
Well done to Clem and the team, it is clear that Lisa is already well ahead of say OpenSuse whose forum is awash with serious bugs in their Gnome 3 release(s).
I would encourage everyone to move forward and embrace the benefits that Gnome 3 will clearly bring to us all very very soon.

Instead of Banshee I recommend to take close look at
DECIBEL audio player and make it default in next releases.
Its one of quickest start up, lowest ram and cpu consumption.
Easy to use and plugin supported. You can adjust it for your own needs.

Clem
Congrats on all the great news. I’m really only a newb and have only been using Mint since LM6. I have to say I have been really happy and appreciative of the work you and the rest of the team have been doing. This includes LM12. My problem is that I know where every thing is going, but I like what has gotten us here. So I m torn between MATE and MGSE. I like them both. I just wish MGSE was easier to customize (it will come). So for that to happen you MUST be doing a h*ll of a job.

Your comment is disgraceful and doesn’t belong to a LM’s forum or any forum at all. The decision to go Ubuntu base for now is a wise decision and I applaud it enthusiastically, the reason is simple, Kubuntu 11.10 provides a very good base to build and awesome OS. LMDE on the other hand is not there yet and requires more development to have KDE at par with other distributions, which KDE shines. LM has to maintain the reputation it is famous for and Clem wisely has recognized it and made the best decision there could be. The virtue of a man is to rectified its mistakes, see if you are capable doing so.

What happens with all the money?
This page lists more than 9000$ only for this month. That doesnt include the advertise income and the income from the searchengine and the banshee amazon ref link.
Do you take it all? Does some other developer get some refund? Do you donate to other projects you use?

Is there any reason we didn’t get a few more RCs before final release? Why not just completely focus on MATE or MSGE editions, and release a bunch of RCs until one is nearly a feature complete replacement for Mint 11? I don’t understand the big hurry to release a “final” especially when it is totally unready for prime time and the end user.

Obviously Gnome 2 is dying. But jumping to Gnome 3 (which totally sucks in every way) and sort of half-assing the true Gnome 2 successors (either XFCE or MATE, or….) doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s totally not elegant. It’s kludgy and a mess, and I look like an idiot to some of my tech friends that I’ve been pushing Linux Mint on so hard for the last 3 years.

I’ve posted here, I’ve posted in the forums, I’ve posted on launchpad, and so far I’ve been completely ignored. I’ll give you that’s better than Ubuntu where if I made a complaint my comments were deleted and I was banned, but it’s still not really the best way to go about fostering a healthy vibrant user base.

@k1l: Most of the money is used to pay the staff. Donations and sponsorships do not represent enough to actually do so, but as you said, there’s also the advertising income, the fact that some expenses (such as the cost of most of the servers we use) are avoided and the search market. Banshee is completely insignificant (which is surprising considering how much noise was made over this between the project and Ubuntu). At the moment we make enough money to have two people full-time and we put money aside every month to tackle upcoming expenses, or to temporarily add a 3rd person to the team (like we’re doing now this December). We need more staff though, and as present we’re not secure enough to guarantee that 3rd position, so it’s temporary. When it comes to the Linux Mint team (outside of the full-time staff), we sometimes introduce money, but it’s rare and difficult to manage. Most of the time it’s to purchase something they need (for instance we bought computers for some team members) rather than to pay them directly. We don’t donate to other projects we use “yet” because our goal isn’t achieved. We want to grow, get more staff, tackle on bigger projects. Eventually I’d like to do so, but our main priority is to grow. When and if we do donate to other projects, it will be from other sources of income than the donations/sponsorships. People donate to see Linux Mint get better, not to see their donations directed elsewhere. We don’t advertise, we don’t accept investments, we’re growing slowly, our commercial activity is tiny in comparison to our focus on Linux Mint, we’re hoping to get to the top of the Linux market and we’re still funded by our community. We could compare ourselves to a startup company and think we’re not growing fast enough, but I think we’re doing very well. From a hobby we’ve become a serious project, and we’re able to fund a staff with people working full-time on Linux Mint and tackle any expense that’s needed for our growth, all of this without losing any of our independence.

I am glad to see such impressive results – the statistic clearly shows a lot has been done, and I am glad things are going that well, as I prefer Linux rather than other operating system and want it to be developed further and further.

I’ll repeat a similar question that I asked on another blog. Andrew, if your boss came to you one day and promised a substantial raise next month, but he could not deliver because everyone in the company, including you and your boss lost their jobs, would you still hold your boss to that promise?

The point is, things change dramatically, and Clem is not immune to that. Yes, it can be disappointing for things to not develop as quickly as we think they should, but Clem is not out to break promises. As he has said many times, he is in triage mode. That being said, I make this request: Get real, or get moving to another distro!

I agree with other posters that Andrew@41 was completely out of line. That kind of perjorative crap has no place in a Linux Mint blog. I think the blog moderator should have the discretion to prevent it from being posted to the blog.

It’s sad to see that Clem has felt obliged to justify what he does with LM donations.
Personally, I would like to think he spends it on fast cars, single malt and loose women.
Unfortunately,our donations will not yet afford him such luxuries. I donate (when I can) because I am using something I enjoy, and I feel Clem’s efforts deserve as much support as possible.

Although i understand Andrew’s frustration, i cannot agree with the way he expressed it. Maybe he understands it now. Some users will be happy, others not. Okay.
But the responses to his posts, and the phrases/words used were much worse. Maybe to whip him in order to accept his terrible sin?

I’m not worried about the donations. I’m worried about the quality of the last release. It’s completely borked. I’ve tried it on 3 different machines, and it is broken on every one. I really don’t understand how anybody is justifying it as a final release, or justifying the fact that there was one VERY BRIEF RC which was not thoroughly tested, debugged, or even double checked when there were dozens of reported issues. The point of an RC is to fix the errors before final release. Not to give a preview of what’s going to still be broken. Why not just release a beta of 13 now for testing? Give everyone six months to find all the holes and plug them. That’s how I’m treating LM 12. It’s a buggy beta release for LM 13. Reminds me a lot of Vista in that way. Vista was a buggy beta release for Windows 7. Sad this is the first time I’ve drawn a parallel between Mint and Windows, particularly a parallel about lack of testing and quality before release.

….. and still no response about these misguided decisions.

I guess you should all understand: I’ve been a HUGE Mint evangelist, installing it on as many computers as possible, backing those installs with free tech support call backs, working around kinks to make something workable for end users, etc.. At this time I still admin about 100 Linux Mint 10 and 11 workstations. I currently will not upgrade ONE of them to Mint 12, nor will I be installing Mint anywhere until there is a usable release again. LM 12 has been a catastrophe on every level. Why? Why not just fix what’s broken and THEN release? What’s the bloody hurry?

1. Gnome 3. Everything about it. No right click functionality anywhere. Tons of crap all over the screen. Two task bars with duplicated functionality. Or should I say duplicated lack of functionality.

2. Mate. I cannot get Mate to boot on 2 of the 3 test machines. On the one it will boot on, it’s glitchy.

3. The install process. I had the installer crash on me no less then 4 times during my 3 installs. Twice on two machines, and none on the third.

4. Does not recognize generic SATA DVD burner. Neither does Linux Mint 11 or LMDE, so at least this is not a regression.

5. Extreme slow downs. Constantly, often for no reason.

In contrast I’ve had only minor issues in Linux Mint 11, LMDE, Linux Mint 10, Tiny Core Linux, Knoppix, Zenwalk, Windows 7 x64, and Mac OS X and above. Of them all Linux Mint 11 is the most stable, usable, fast, and extensible out of the box. To go from the best OS available to the worst I’ve dealt with in over 5 years is a pretty horrible regression.

@rhy
No offense but my run on it was smooth as silk. I respect what you are saying but sometimes things do go haywire in certain hardware scenarios. You don’t mention if you tried another burn or if it is 32 or 64 bit. I have found some distros need a tweak or two no matter who’s it is and then they fly. Also as an Admin I’m sure you do testing. So sometimes in environments we as Admins do wait for another release. Nothing wrong with that either. When you are the one responsible I think you have been wise not to roll with a release that doesn’t meet your needs yet. But remember your situation may differ from others and that doesn’t make this a bad release.

@all who complain about donations

Really I just want to say come on man! This is a small project competing heavily with the big corporate sponsored projects and doning mighty well. Bugs exists in the best of even paid software. This is a donation driven project and I applaud Clem and the team. And if you cannot donate as I know times are tough, share some bandwidth for the torrents from time to time. It helps us all.

@rhY: First off, I understand your frustration with the whole Gnome 3 thing. I personally keep trying to make it work, and it’s just not a good fit for me, with or without the Mint extensions. And I’ve honestly said some things about it I probably shouldn’t have.

That said, I would really like to see you back off a bit (that’s just my opinion/wish, not a demand). Clem’s doing everything he can with the junk that gets handed down from the Ubuntu pipeline. They have switched everything to GTK 3, and thus Mint must also if they are to use the Ubuntu base and keep their normal release schedule.

To mitigate the problems this causes, Clem has come up with some really quite nice extensions to soften the Gnome 3 blow. This is something he really didn’t HAVE to do, but he did it for people like you and I who won’t handle pure Gnome 3 well. If you don’t like them because they repeat functionality that already exists in Gnome 3, you may turn them off. He’s also included MATE, which is a project in its infancy. It should not be expected to be a perfect Gnome 2 twin at this point. But it shows that Clem is on your side (and mine). He’s trying to create something that will make us all happy (which is an impossible feat).

I have to say that your posts really don’t offer Clem any encouragement or thanks for doing what he’s doing out of love for this community. Please try not to be so overly critical and discouraging (posts #56 and #66 are examples of what I mean).

If you don’t like what’s going on in Mint 12, don’t use it. Drop back to Mint 9, 10, or 11 (I’m back on Mint 10 for now, as Mint 11 was pretty bad on my hardware, too). Believe me. Use an older Mint with up-to-date PPA’s for the software you want to keep bleeding edge. It’ll make you a very happy Minter! It has me!

If you’re concerned about impressing non-Linux users into using Mint, show them the last LTS (Mint 9) release with updated PPA’s! Talk about stable, long-term, and impressive! If you want to show them usable glitz, try the latest KDE release combined with a more up-to-date KDE PPA. For non-Linuxers I basically say that anything in between LTS releases should be considered testing releases leading up to the next LTS.

Overall, this is not about you or me. This is about Clem enjoying his hobby, and we’re all just reaping the benefit of his generosity in sharing that hobby with us. We have no right to demand anything. I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but relax. Clem’s got us in good hands.

With all the chaos of the current state of Gnome, I have become a dedicated Xfce user. It is now the best choice of a GTK based desktop for Linux. It is a real desktop environment, not something pretending to be. So similar to good old Gnome 2 it’s amazing! I applaud the Xfce team for staying with the tried and true desktop paradigm. LMDE with Xfce is an ideal system, IMHO.

@ Clem:
It seems MATE has not quite gained the expected awareness among Gnome 2 users, as far as criticisms for the abandonment of G2 are quite resounding and there are pretty much no comments or praise on MATE but only just on MGSE and the way you are making Gnome 3 work.

I’d think the team has to make an extra effort to increase its awareness, probably with a special post on its features, benefits and similarities with Gnome 2, with obligated screenshots to dust off the alienating feel of its recent introduction. Also a pool would be great to draw some attention to it and some conclusions on what the user base is choosing, and whether they considered MATE or not.
Could also be that you sent an update to the OS that made it clearer in some way that MATE is available right away to be chosen.

Thanks, it would be great if you had a few words to reply. Best wishes!

“Linux Mint altered the Banshee Amazon MP3 Canonical referral code to that of its own, taking 100% of all profits made in the process.

In ‘standard upstream’ Banshee all25% of the money raised through the sale of MP3s via the plugin goes to the non-profit GNOME Foundation – which, as of September 2011, has raised some $9200.”

Edit by Clem: Link removed (assimilated to FUD). Already answered in the comment section of http://www.glasen-hardt.de/?p=1474 and I also added a comment on the blog you mentioned. There’s nothing secret and there’s nothing of interest here either. It’s a code change, we modified the patch on this package so that instead of replacing the Banshee code with Canonical’s, it now replaces it with ours. It’s written in plain English in the changelog, like any other package change. We’re happy to share with Banshee, and to give them more than 25% (that’s what they get from Canonical), just to make it clear to everyone involved, that when it comes to the revenue Mint users generate, Canonical isn’t in a position to decide on revenue sharing. For info, this particular revenue stream represents $3.41/month at the moment and we do not make a blog post about every package change out there. We’re also changing the Yahoo code (even though we do not monetize it) and any other affiliate codes present in Linux Mint, some to our own versions, others we simply remove. Just like branding, we are not using other people’s codes, unless we have an agreement with them. Previous versions of Mint used the Canonical code in Banshee (simply because we never really looked into it before), in Linux Mint 12 this was flagged as a bug and we changed it to our own. If we didn’t have a code we would have changed it back to Banshee’s (maybe) or removed all codes and linked directly to Amazon. Either way, when it comes to monetizing the traffic generating by Mint users, we make these decisions, not Banshee, and certainly not Canonical. As I said before, I’m happy to share upstream, but don’t expect to see 3rd party codes running affiliates in Linux Mint.

Clem, wrt John@75, you’re going beyond the call of duty to respond to such ignorant drivel. I strongly suspect that most serious supporters of the Mint community would prefer to see you engaged in productive work that continues to bring us a high-quality, FREE operating system

Edit by Clem: That’s a valid point. Though it’s important to answer questions, especially when they dissimulate accusations of theft, fraud and malice. We’re both ethical and transparent and it’s important we stress that out when that is being questioned. You can argue that PR isn’t as important as development, but it also needs attention.

@Clem
You need to make a specific posting regarding the Banshee topic. If you want to prevent FUD, you can’t expect people to read bits and pieces (comments) here and there. It’s essential that you make it completely clear and transparent how revenue streams are handled in Mint, and I think a post on this blog will do that

Also, a “Mint user” can also be a “Banshee user”. It’s not as easy as to label all users of Banshee as Mint users, and therefor the money should go to Mint. It’s quite possible that they have read (on Banshees web page for instance) that a portion of their money that they buy music for in Banshee, is going to GNOME. And maybe that’s the reason for them buying music through Banshee! I think you misjudged this.

Edit by Clem: I completely agree on the “user” thing. These users are as much Banshee users as they are Mint users. And I also completely agree with the fact that Banshee (or GNOME in particular), should receive a share of this money. If people are interested in the Banshee revenue stream, they can read about it at http://banshee.fm/about/revenue/ (where our 50% share is mentioned). We didn’t talk about it when talking about the search market, and we didn’t talk about it when making the change, for the very reason that we didn’t think it was important. Anything that has “ubuntu” written on it, whether it’s branding or revenue stream, has nothing to do in Mint and automatically gets replaced or removed. That’s routine. The fact that some blogs make money and traffic by bouncing on this controversy doesn’t suddenly change that.

There are of course some professional purveyors of FUD around and LinuxMint must now be higher on their hit-list as it’s a crazy shark-infested world !
Bit of a left-handed compliment, so congratulations on the diplomatic handling which can nevertheless expend effort. No response needed.

@Clem : I agree with @GR and @Bruce. I also read Joey on other blog and their community replies and like GR and Bruce said no response needed. We don’nt like you clarifying other forums, where others are hardly bothered and ready to see/understand the things. Criticism and negative comments sometime helps you to see/take the right direction/steps. Please don’nt do that. We as Mint community believe in you. If anyone would have said anything in our Forums, we would have taken care on your behalf. But on other places it becomes opposite vise-versa. With No.1 position (Distrowatch, I know its hardly matters) some troubles had to come, as others are not able to digest it.

@Manny & others : Yes you are right in saying that right now KDE based on Kubuntu is the best option. I myself like to see it. I read comments of Ubuntu employees and perhaps their fans. Let me quote some of their comments “Linux Mint gains on the expenses of Ubuntu”. “Linux Mint 90% Ubuntu 10% tweaks what’s is the big deal” and many more. I know that KDE based on debian right now not possible and perhaps would not be ready by 25th December. And many of us including me perhaps not liked it. But, we want Clem to become independent not dependent. As long as you are dependent (Ubuntu) you have to hear the comments like above. People have started liking LMDE-Gnome. To say honestly, when something goes wrong in LMDE I have to reinstall it or may be Katya. I hope Clem will find solution to all these problems in future. But if the journey is not started, how its gon’na end. One last thing I know Debian is not latest like Ubuntu and Kubuntu, But its stable. You are seeing whats happening with Gnome-3, which is latest, perhaps more latest than we can handle.

@Manny since being on one forums may be our paths are different, but our hearts are on this Forum (like @PB said earlier). We want the progress of Linux Mint. Where people not say that start taking packages from Ubuntu/ Arch etc. etc. Anyway, it was my opinion. See you all in KDE-RC, when it released.

Edit by Clem: Thanks Bobby. Very good point. I’ll leave it and won’t spend time there anymore.

A few minor problems with Mint.
I am an OLD guy. Basically an indigent retiree in his seventies.
I do not tak fools lightely anymore as you have probably guessed by now.
I saw Mint and its “MATE” desktop as a way to weap Windows dummies of of .. well, Windows. I tried to show them them the Ubuntu Gnome Classic and the newer Unity, but they wanted .. WINDOWS.
Neatest thing for an ex-windows “dummy” is the Mate desktop.
For me, I’ll stick with Ubuntu Gnome Classic or wtf it is called now.
Although! The Unity interface could be a winner for someone who has NEVER used a PC before. Or only uses a phone or tablet. BAH!
But keep plugging away!
Wish a Donation? See the word “indigent” above. Sorry.. If I were rich I really would.

@bobby. I agree with you 100%. KDE is becoming very strong those days and to port to LMDE will require to polish the rough edges first. However it is not difficult to install the KDE environment on LMDE, lots of us have done it very successfully, maybe LMDE should be an environment neutral where the user could choose which environment would like to run on it. Clem, do you thing this could be a good idea and easy to implement?

Who are you to tell me whether or not I should belong to any particular forum or not, the comments posted here, range from one end of the spectrum to the other….it’s called free speech…. freedom to express my point of view on any given subject….it’s my God-given right, to express what I feel. Sure, maybe I should have been a little less whatever, but the thing is, we’re all adults here, we all have the right to express our opinion, just with out the vulgar and profain language…..please except my apologies.

@Manny, KDE can be put onto LMDE depending on what disc you use, with the newer ones, there seems to be dependency issues whether in synaptic, UD manager, or terminal, starting with kdemultimedia and going from there…..all the way down to xine & libxine1 (from my own personal experience & tweaking)

Clem,
In post 15 you write you want to release Mint KDE before Christmas, when possible. I can only advice you: don’t do that. This way we probably will get another not finished product as a “stable” release, just as with the Gnome version. Reading the blogs you know by now what people think of Lisa. Please don’t mess up the KDE version as well.

I have always been a Gnome user but I have switched to KDE simply because I refuse to work with anything related to Gnome 3. No matter what you and the team have put on top of it, it is still Gnome 3.

Since 2 weeks or so I am enjoying KDE (Kubuntu 11.10). It works great, it looks fantastic, the KDE Plasma desktop is amazing.

Please take your time with this KDE version, test it, have it come out as beta and RC, resolve issues which people all around the world find and when it is completely ready release it. Don’t make the same mistake as with Gnome Lisa. Please.

@DeMus: MATE and Gnome 3 are brand new desktops and it’s normal you don’t find them mature. KDE 4 has been here a while. In terms of timing, we’re hoping for an RC this month. You’re not going to see both an RC and a stable release before Xmas.

Well, I am happy you do take time to make sure the KDE version will be good. I really am.
You say: both MATE and Gnome 3 are brand new desktops and it is normal you don’t find them mature. Then why release Mint 12 when you know it is not ready? This is undermining the good name Mint has.
In earlier posts I stated that Lisa was a premature alpha and I stick to that. It’s nothing more than that. So I skipped to KDE and honestly wished I had done that earlier.
I have 2 computers, one I will use to test the Mint KDE RC when it is available to help improve (if necessary) this release.
Once again, take your time, don’t rush it. Better a week later and really finished then another unfinished product.

Well I suspect that what…. a buck fifty a month is all gnome3 is worth looking at it from this end. But if you must.

On a serious note and a topic that matters… Congrats on all the recent fixes and contributions of all kinds. That was a nice write of all the various ways that Linux Mint is receiving feedback and help from the community. Very nice.

@DeMus: Because we’re not only using desktops, we have an impact on how successful they become and how quickly they mature. For instance, the fact that we featured MATE in Mint 12 gave it a lot of momentum. Same with Gnome 3 (to a lesser extent because other distributions provide it, still MGSE is easing its adoption for many users). It’s not just about Mint 12, it’s about looking towards the future. We can’t just stop with Gnome 2 and suddenly switch to KDE. We need to make our best to regain quality desktops that will be popular in the future, and that means betting on Gnome 3, while trying to give MATE all the help it needs to give us a great Gnome 2 desktop in future releases. We could have skipped a release or announced we wouldn’t support Gnome/MATE this release cycle, that their quality wasn’t up to our standard… but that wouldn’t have helped anyone, and 6 months later it wouldn’t have helped either us or them in getting better. There’s a lot missing still, and we’re starting from scratch compared to when we had Gnome 2, but we need to get started and it’s not something we can do on our own, we need users, feedback, momentum in these projects for them to become the successful desktops of tomorrow. I personally joined the MATE team as well, and although GNOME is going in its own direction and isn’t interested in MGSE (not yet anyway) we’re working hard on bringing features to it and we have a lot faith in it. Whatever happens to these two desktops in the future, whether they’ll become successful, whether they’ll help us implement our vision of the Mint destkop, whether we’ll work hand in hand with them or fork our own implementation of a desktop from them, we don’t know, but they have a lot of potential, they’re the most promising alternatives to Gnome 2 for the future and right now they need a lot of help and momentum.

Clem, you’re right on target wrt DeMus@89. So he’s a big KDE fan but he totally fails to appreciate that KDE went through a multi-year period of maturation just like Gnome 3 & Mate are going through now. No distro shipped a stable, mature version of KDE 4.0…..it took several iterations to make KDE as good as it is today….why can’t users like DeMus realize that other DEs will similarly evolve?

What I can see of Mint 12 certainly is attractive. I had to abort the 64 bit version 11 times this evening during instalation.

1 A bug seems to be in the keyboard setup. After it passes that section, the keyboard would not input data and that is as far as I could get. [KBD is Ok as I’m using it right now in DSL Linux to contact you].

2. Another bug is that in the partitioning section. On screen character output is over witten with blocks of black making it impossible to proceed with partitioning.

Clem I have one small concern it’s nothing against you or LinuxMint.
But I’m wondering if you do or would consider Donating a small amount of money each mouth back to Canonical and Debian? even $100 a mouth is substantial

LinuxMint is great and I love the tools and versions you and the teams make! But as you know you base on Ubuntu and Debian and you really want them to be healthy. You and LinuxMint supporting them would be beneficial to both you and LinuxMint!

I’ve just been worried about this. I want all the projects to be healthy! Thanks for everything Clem

JD@93
You profess great respect and admiration for Mint. Do you donate to Mint? Even more to the point, do you donate to Ubuntu? If not, why should anyone in the Mint community take your ‘charitable concerns’ seriously? Are your concerns really genuine or are you the next sly Ubuntu fox in the hen-house?

If you truly have the best interests of the Mint community at heart, then I recommend you do the following in this blog: (1) Disclose your donation history for both distributions, 2) Justify to other Mint donors why our donations to Mint should be transferred to Ubuntu which is funded by an extremely wealthy individual, (3) Disclose your complete list of all projects that you want Mint to make healthy so we can determine the other entities to which you want our donations transferred, (4) How much do you think Ubuntu should donate back to Mint? After all, Mint contributes code to the FOSS community, too, and (5) if Mint responds that they will not make a donation to Ubuntu, what is your next action? If you happen to be the sly Ubuntu fox, then on which pro-Ubuntu blog should we expect to see the next sensationalist rant like the one above re: Banshee?

Speaking strictly for myself, I do support Mint and I DO NOT want my donations transferred to Ubuntu or anyone else…..Just my $3.41 cents worth

Edit by Clem: Please respect each others. JD’s idea is honorable and he’s got a point. You’ve got a point too when you say donors donate for Mint to grow, not for it to go elsewhere. There’s really no need to talk like that. JD: Our priority is to grow, not to donate to projects who are doing extremely well already (though it’s more debatable for Debian). If we were to donate to upstream projects it would come from other revenues, not donations or sponsorships.

@Clem : This is what I meant when I said in our forum, mint community can take care on your behalf.

Looking at the hell Gnome-3 has made and is not ready to heed to the user voices. They should not be given a penny (why even 50%).

Edit by Clem: I disagree on the fact that they don’t deserve a penny. You’re forgetting they brought us Gnome 2, and you’re also forgetting that under the shell you don’t like, there’s a brand new technology and GTK3 which we’ll use to build something you’ll eventually love. So they do deserve to do well, whether we’re in a position to help them (when we only have 3 devs.. ) that’s arguable, and whatever happened, if we were to donate money, it wouldn’t be the money people donate to us.. it would make no sense for us to ask/accept help from you if we were to resend these funds away.

RE:”why should anyone in the Mint community take your ‘charitable concerns’ seriously? Are your concerns really genuine or are you the next sly Ubuntu fox in the hen-house?”

I truly wish I was a “sly fox” that sounds cool , but I don’t roll that way. No these concerns are genuine I promise. As I said I am not attacking LinuxMint. I was merely making the “suggestion” they should consider donating a few bucks back.

However what you really need to understand is LinuxMint is great but is not independent from Ubuntu or Debian, There is nothing wrong with that, That is the beauty of Open Source! but you need to understand that LinuxMint is essentially developed by Clem, And the alternate desktop editions of it by a few others, Clem is a great guy, but he can’t do everything! and as such relies on the work by the Debian Volunteers,Canonical Volunteers and Employees. These people put the base system and most of the packages on which Mint is based, together. Mints small but dedicated team would not have the time to package all that stuff! and they don’t have to!

I’m not sure how technical you want to get here but I’m just very concerned that we should not undervalue the Mint heritage. If Debian is unhealthy Mint is unhealthy, If Ubuntu is unhealthy Mint is unhealthy.

SO all I was merely “proposing” is Mint donate (even a small amount helps) back to Ubuntu and Debian on a regular basis. weather it be a $100 here and there or leaving the Ubuntu Banshee affiliate code be.

A few of your questions:
RE: “…why our donations to Mint should be transferred to Ubuntu which is funded by an extremely wealthy individual”

I never said I wanted “your donations transferred” I merely stated Mint should THINK about donating back, they make money from ads sponsorships etc who said it had to be “YOUR” donation..

Yes Ubuntu was started by a “wealthy man” but he is essentially spending his money everyday to try to make Ubuntu. Canonical is “almost profitable” if it where profitable then maybe your argument would make sense. Mark does not have unlimited money! So I think we should support canonical in being successful.

RE:”Disclose your complete list of all projects that you want Mint to make healthy so we can determine the other entities to which you want our donations transferred”

Again,I never said I wanted “your donations transferred” I merely stated Mint should THINK about donating back, they make money from ads sponsorships etc who said it had to be “YOUR” donation..

But If its a list you want:
The Linux Kernel,Gnome,Debian,Ubuntu.
Why?, Debian/Ubuntu Provide :a majority of packaging.
Mint uses Ubuntu’s kernel(Built by there payed staff) and Debians.
Mint uses Debian/Ubuntu as base system.

RE:”Speaking strictly for myself, I do support Mint and I DO NOT want my donations transferred to Ubuntu or anyone else…..Just my $3.41 cents worth”

ONCE AGAIN, I never said I wanted “your donations transferred” I merely stated Mint should THINK about donating back, they make money from ads sponsorships etc who said it had to be “YOUR” donation..

And You should reconsider, Lets not harbor grudges or disrespect.
We are a community lets act like one. Debian,Ubuntu and Mint harmony

“GR” you seem like a great community member, Please understand I am trying to do the same. I mean no spitefulness or flamewars.

Anywho LinuxMint seems to be doing just fine financially. Unless they are going to hire a boatload of new developers full time. So Why not donate a few bucks here and there to the system they are based on? I’m not saying this in a angry or spiteful way… I was Merely making a suggestion.

Just think, What if Debian and Ubuntu stopped being developed? what would happen to mint? I’m just “Suggesting” not demanding Mint might want to donate a few bucks here and there back. to make sure that never happens to it! And Mint gets to continue being the great distro it is.

Edit by Clem: We have a great heritage and we’re proud of it and grateful to be able to rely on it. We don’t want to “depend” on it though. If Ubuntu stopped we’d waste entire months switching everything to Debian. If Debian stopped we’d waste maybe up to a year to develop our own package base. If this was to happen we’d have very little time to innovate on the desktop. First, because we rely on these projects. Second because we’re too small to do it ourselves without slowing down on the innovation. The priority for us, of course, is to grow, especially in a context where Ubuntu is targeting a different user base than us and slowly exiting our market, where Gnome isn’t necessarily going in the direction we want to follow, and where we have very little impact on the decisions taken by Debian. It’s extremely important we can continue to achieve our goals and implement our vision of what we want our desktop OS to be, upstream projects help us do that, but they have their own agendas. There’s a lot to be proud of and grateful for, but we need to grow if we want to do be able to fully decide how Mint will be in the future, and that’s our top priority.

@JD: I think the problem is that mint doesn’t have enough full time developers working on the project…Clem mentioned that he finally had enough money to hire just one other full time developer and a third only temporarily (due to insufficient funds to support 3 at this time)….so makes much more sense to concentrate donations to Linux Mint where it is needed the most…This is something you should keep in mind…

Edit by Clem: It’s amazing how much more we can do with just one extra person full-time. In a big company it probably doesn’t make much difference. In our structure, it’s night and day, we can take on much bigger projects and do things much faster.

@JD : Good points. But does Ubuntu, who itself uses Debian packages make some donation to Debian. Or may be to Gnome. I was not knowing that Ubuntu is making the Kernel! What Mint is doing, in another way Ubuntu is doing the same thing, taking the packages from the Debian using Gnome and Kernel etc. etc.

Marks Shuttleworth is losing money on Ubuntu. Wow! Now Ubuntu requires Donations. Is Shuttleworth reading all these? If its becoming difficult for Ubuntu, may be its time for close down. I don’nt know about Clem but being user, I would have suggested that no donations should be given to Gnome and Ubuntu who are not listening to their users. One is going behind Unity and cell phones other is Gnome-3 and Tabs (future market). Has Shuttleworth ever bothered about users!

How the money from advertisement/ sponsorship and other applications are generated. Not through the Ubuntu Users. It is the Mint users who are using the applications and watching the advertisements. Don’nt tell me that Ubuntu and others community users loging to Mint daily and helping generating money through advts.and applications. It is generated through Mint users. So we (community) got full right on it how it should be spent. And before giving any donation Clem should take our (community) consent also (because of which the money is generated). If we (community) is not there can Clem receive donations or generate money through advertisements or applications. Are the sponsors giving their money for donating to other? @GR is right here.

Any way for a change, I may agree on Debian and perhaps kernel as you said. Let the community/Clem decide on it. But definitely not without our (community, which include sponsors/ donors/ users) consent.

And to Bobby: well although some frown upon some of the things ubuntu has done, they do bring a lot of good to linux as well…I’m sure Clem would agree with that…and that is why they have always made an excellent “base” for mint…

Don’t forget…font rendering on LMDE would be quite poor if Clem didn’t patch in the ubuntu patches to libcairo…ubuntu is one of the best rendering of all linux distros…not so sure debian is always the answer for everything…ubuntu brings a lot of innovation into the picture also…

@Bobby, a few years ago, if I remember well, Clem mentioned one time to donate some of the revenue to the upstream projects. The community made it clear that the donations to Mint were for Mint only. Any one is free to support the upstream projects with his donation if he wishes. I’m sponsoring Linux Mint and my donation is for Mint and its project only.

I don’t understand all the questioning about the revenue. This is the first time the donations went that high, not long time ago a good month were not even half of that. Every one seems to forget that Clem left his paying job to dedicate his time developing LM, no body is taking into consideration his gamble when the revenue were around $3,000 a month, the expenses he incurred buying equipment when he had a family to support. What is going on with some of you guys, would you please before posting again to think about it?

@DeMus: MATE and Gnome 3 are brand new desktops and it’s normal you don’t find them mature. KDE 4 has been here a while. In terms of timing, we’re hoping for an RC this month. You’re not going to see both an RC and a stable release before Xmas.

I certainly respect that decision, and wish you would have also split the LM 12 RC and Stable releases farther apart. That is my big gripe. The RC was total crap, and then BAM a week later we get a broken “final”. This was a bad decision, plain and simple.

As to all the others mentions several cogent points: I am thankful of all the work Clem et al have put in. I’ve even donated in the past, and also installed Mint all over the Western US, from Alaska to Tijuana, on many, many laptops, netbooks, desktops, and even the occasional server. I’m not an ingrate. I’m an ACTIVE member of the Mint community, and right now, I’m stuck using Mint 10 (or 11, I’m brave) and hacking all kinds of PPAs to get it up to date. This is bad news over all for Mint, and bad news specifically for myself and several of my end users.

Clearly Ubuntu has derailed, and maybe it’s time for Mint to strike out altogether on it’s own. LMDE has been much more stable and easy to use for a while now, however I miss PPA functionality. Honestly, LMDE with an improved MATE and PPA functionality seems like the way to go, and just ditch Ubuntu, Unity, Gnome 3 and all that garbage altogether. I’ve got a 60 hour a week IT job, 2 bands, and a baby on the way, so I don’t have time to create a fork, or I would. This is bad news, too, though, as I do feel Linux needs one strong player that John Q Public can look at and say, “Hey, that looks great and works well, and I don’t have to pay for it! Let’s switch and ditch the Microsoft tax once and for all!” I’d like for Mint to be that distro, but right now, it’s just broken crap with 5 interfaces and “final” releases buggier than most other distro’s RCs!

This is not what I’ve come to expect from Mint. This is why you hear me hollering hear, on the forums, in launchpad, and in the IRC. I deeply, truly want Mint to be the OS for the masses, not tomorrow, or sometime next year, but right now. Mint 10 was so close, and instead of getting closer and closer with Mint 11 and 12, we are getting farther and farther. This is a drag, and I’d like to see some talk about a change of direction for the better, particularly dropping Broken Gnome 3 altogether and going after the big dogs, like Mac and Microsoft. *sigh* I have to be honest though, even in it’s currently broken incarnation Mint 12 is a heck of a lot better than the Windows 8 beta *shudder*.

I was using the stock x64 edition. The disk was good. I did a lot of tweaking and still couldn’t get it to work at all, and MATE in fact would not boot at all, which is a shame since many reviews are stating that even in it’s beta form MATE is looking good.

RE:”so makes much more sense to concentrate donations to Linux Mint where it is needed the most…This is something you should keep in mind…”

That is fine, But as Clem said:”If Ubuntu stopped we’d waste entire months switching everything to Debian. If Debian stopped we’d waste maybe up to a year to develop our own package base. If this was to happen we’d have very little time to innovate on the desktop. First, because we rely on these projects. Second because we’re too small to do it ourselves without slowing down on the innovation”

I feel it’s important to donate (even a very small amount) to the projects mint is based on so nothing bad like that will ever happen. $100 would not have an effect on hiring new developers. SO please try to understand my suggestion.

@101 bobby,
bobby I’m glad you get where I’m coming from, from a kind suggestion standpoint.

RE:”I was not knowing that Ubuntu is making the Kernel!”

Yes they compile a patched version of the Linux kernel. it’s not as easy as it sounds, they have to make sure drivers and devices and supported work and don’t break.

RE:”What Mint is doing, in another way Ubuntu is doing the same thing, taking the packages from the Debian using Gnome and Kernel etc. etc.”

That is someone-what correct BUT.. Ubuntu has hired multiple Debian developers full time. Contributed back patches. Created the Upstart startup technology. created Notify OSD and multiple other technologies used by debain. So Ubuntu does give back to Debian.

Ubuntu does not take Debian’s kernel, they roll there own… and it has some binary blobs to make other hardware work.

RE:”Marks Shuttleworth is losing money on Ubuntu. Wow! Now Ubuntu requires Donations. Is Shuttleworth reading all these? If its becoming difficult for Ubuntu, may be its time for close down.”

Yes he is investing money in canonical and paying the bills (Since canonical is not making a profit Yet*). Ubuntu doesn’t “Require” Donations But it would be nice to take care of Ubuntu since mint is based on it.

We don’t want them to “Close down” thats not good for anyone.
Canonical was never founded trying to be being super rich. But it would be great if they could sustain them-selfs.

RE:”Any way for a change, I may agree on Debian and perhaps kernel as you said. Let the community/Clem decide on it. But definitely not without our (community, which include sponsors/ donors/ users) consent.”

Yes of course this is merely a suggestion. But Mint makes money from commercial sponsors as well so a feel a few bucks(even $100 or less is fine) here and there should be donated to other projects like Debian,Gnome, Ubuntu to help them out. IF the community agrees too I hope it will happen.

@103 Manny,

RE: “a few years ago, if I remember well, Clem mentioned one time to donate some of the revenue to the upstream projects. The community made it clear that the donations to Mint were for Mint only. Any one is free to support the upstream projects with his donation if he wishes. I’m sponsoring Linux Mint and my donation is for Mint and its project only.”

So you want Mint to support “Mint Only” ? and totally abandon it’s base system? GUYS! I really feel you and the community should reconsider.
I’m not saying donate a huge chunk! just a few bucks here and there.
It could be from the commercial sponsors. It makes no scene to me to be so resistant to helping upstream even just a little bit!

RE:”I don’t understand all the questioning about the revenue. This is the first time the donations went that high, not long time ago a good month were not even half of that. Every one seems to forget that Clem left his paying job to dedicate his time developing LM, no body is taking into consideration his gamble when the revenue were around $3,000 a month, the expenses he incurred buying equipment when he had a family to support. What is going on with some of you guys, would you please before posting again to think about it?”

NO Manny, Nothing is “Going on” with anyone. you just don’t seem to understand. Clem is doing just fine (Lately) and even had enough to hire 1 full time and 1 part time developer. So in times like these when there is more money being pulled in I merely suggest Mint donate back (A small amount is fine) back to Debian, Gnome or Ubuntu. The distros they are based on! There is no harm in this so lighten up my friend. If Clem was struggling financially we would all understand if they skipped donating. And I’m sure the community would step in and help him (Because he’s great and he deserves it.)

@Clem
RE:”We have a great heritage and we’re proud of it and grateful to be able to rely on it. We don’t want to “depend” on it though. If Ubuntu stopped we’d waste entire months switching everything to Debian. If Debian stopped we’d waste maybe up to a year to develop our own package base. If this was to happen we’d have very little time to innovate on the desktop. First, because we rely on these projects. Second because we’re too small to do it ourselves without slowing down on the innovation. The priority for us, of course, is to grow, especially in a context where Ubuntu is targeting a different user base than us and slowly exiting our market, where Gnome isn’t necessarily going in the direction we want to follow, and where we have very little impact on the decisions taken by Debian. It’s extremely important we can continue to achieve our goals and implement our vision of what we want our desktop OS to be, upstream projects help us do that, but they have their own agendas. There’s a lot to be proud of and grateful for, but we need to grow if we want to do be able to fully decide how Mint will be in the future, and that’s our top priority.”

Thanks for the great input Clem! I hope you understand I really respect you and LinuxMint. You deserve all the donations and sponsors you get.

It’s just as you said, it would be a huge waste of time and innovation if something happened to Debian or Ubuntu. I have just been feeling strongly that I should suggest donating a small amount each to them once in awhile. And hope you consider asking the community about it

@JD : RE: Yes of course this is merely a suggestion. But Mint makes money from commercial sponsors as well so a feel a few bucks(even $100 or less is fine) here and there should be donated to other projects like Debian,Gnome, Ubuntu to help them out. IF the community agrees too I hope it will happen.

Your above line ends all the thing. Let the community decide.

You put Clem in trouble asking about donations on community site. You should have emailed the Clem directly (I know you know his email!), perhaps Clem might have donated privately.

RE : When I said ‘Is Shuttleworth reading all these?’
I meant he might be a self respect men and if he comes to know that people are asking for donations for Ubuntu (His) behalf. How will he face it (or is it otherwise).

You did not reply to my lines : “no donations should be given to Gnome and Ubuntu who are not listening to their users. One is going behind Unity and cell phones other is Gnome-3 and Tabs (future market). Has Shuttleworth ever bothered about users!”

JD just think, If I am a user and donating to Mint/Ubuntu and expecting that in return I will be given a distro that work flawlessly and help me in my day-to-day work. If that does not happen. Will I continue donating? Certainly not (perhaps you may think otherwise). This is what is happening with Ubuntu and Gnome. They are not bothered about users. You may think of donating to them, but certainly not me. Let Ubuntu and Gnome new users donate for them.

I have already suggested Clem to not base their system on Ubuntu. So from my point of view Ubuntu goes completely. Regarding Debian and Kernel, I already expressed my opinion.

@Clem : Now you know, why we and some other users wanted KDE-LMDE. And have we ever complained that we want any system right now or may be before 25th December. We as your community always believed in waiting rather than getting unfinished base. We can wait for a month or two, we already have Katya and Julia (hold on @JD) and also LMDE-which the users are enjoying more.

@Manny : This is what I meant, when I said we want Mint progress. And start reading the blogs of others linux community as well and you will understand what is going on. If not, I will give you a link.

@Clem : How can you decide yourself about 50% to Gnome Re: Banshee without asking for suggestion/ consent from Mint community.

@Clem : We as Mint community can wait for a year also, if it goes to that extent.

Canonical, in its pursuit to make ubuntu an “everything for everybody” type of solution has become the proverbial jack of all trades. Mint team should be careful not to follow that path and only concentrate on a specific category for a specific profile of audience, that it can manage comfortably, in a masterly way.

I finally got around to installing Mint 12, and my impression has changed since I toyed with the RC on live boot a couple weeks ago.

It has gotten vastly more positive.

I was impressed from the outset at how much functionality you’d managed to lend to GNOME 3, but I still felt limited.

Now with the updates and having spent more time with it, my opinion has gotten even more positive.

The way the interface works is a little different. But within a few hours I was used to this, and while some minor flexibility issues remain, I don’t feel as limited as I did before.

Indeed, while MGSE still has signs of an identity crisis, it is actually very intuitive in a lot of ways. And I would say it might even represent an improvement over GNOME 2 (and certainly an enormous improvement over straight GNOME 3).

It actually seems more stable and less buggy than Mint 11 did to me. The application screen is getting more and more use the longer I use Mint 12, and I’m finding myself liking it more and more.

I’ve toyed with MATE and it seems to be coming along very well. Once again, major kudos to you guys.

But I primarily live on the GNOME MGSE side… because I like it better.

You guys have done an amazing job with this and Mint continues to get the highest marks from me.

I agree with Cat….actually Mint 12 has been installed on my laptop for about a week now and i am really appreciating how well put together it is especially considering the drastic change over to gnome 3 and the shell…I’m sure Mint 13 will be a terrific release with even more features and polish…

But for now, i am finding Mint 12 to be a REAL PLEASURE TO USE…really excellent work Clem! In fact i was running ubuntu 11.10 with unity (which i actually didn’t find to be that bad) but it feels so nice to be back with mint again…

Ok I’m sorry we are wearing this topic into the ground but I really want to clarify a few last points.

@106 bobby.

RE: “When I said ‘Is Shuttleworth reading all these?’
I meant he might be a self respect men and if he comes to know that people are asking for donations for Ubuntu (His) behalf. How will he face it (or is it otherwise).”

Sorry if this was a tad confusing but…
I NEVER suggested donations to Ubuntu on Mark Shuttleworth’s behalf!
The only reason I mention his name is someone made the point of saying “Why bother donating to Ubuntu if its run by a wealthy man” I merely defended supporting Ubuntu financially and said Mark may be wealthy but we want Ubuntu to be successful on it’s own, Something mark would hopefully approve of.

RE: “You put Clem in trouble asking about donations on community site. You should have emailed the Clem directly (I know you know his email!), perhaps Clem might have donated privately.”

I AM NOT asking for donations. I have no right nor authority to do so.
I was merely suggesting Mint consider doing so out of the good of it’s heart to help the community.

I’m terribly sorry if I got him in “trouble” I did not mean to do this. It was a simple suggestion. However I felt that having this talk in the open is more of the open-source way to do something.
I AM NOT asking for donations, If I had emailed him directly It would have not been to “ask for donations” or ask him to donate privately It would have been to SUGGEST a donation program to help out Debian, Linux and Ubuntu.

RE:”If I am a user and donating to Mint/Ubuntu and expecting that in return I will be given a distro that work flawlessly and help me in my day-to-day work. If that does not happen. Will I continue donating? Certainly not (perhaps you may think otherwise). This is what is happening with Ubuntu and Gnome. They are not bothered about users. You may think of donating to them, but certainly not me. Let Ubuntu and Gnome new users donate for them.”

If you consider Mint to “work flawlessly and help me in my day-to-day work” The you have Ubuntu and Gnome to thank for that still… The main version of Mint still is based on Ubuntu. Most Mint Users use Mint based on Ubuntu. So it would only make sense if you like Mint to at least be thankful to Ubuntu,Gnome and Debian and “Consider” supporting them.

It doesn’t matter if you like Unity or Gnome3 , the main edition of LinuxMint is still based on Ubuntu! The packages, The Kernel Etc…
So three is no reason to hold grudges. And not support it because you don’t like the way it is being run. Mint is still using a modified version of it as a base!

Once again, I AM NOT asking for donations. I have no right nor authority to do so.

I’m “suggesting” LinuxMint should “consider” donating Regularly *EVEN A VERY SMALL AMOUNT* (out of love and support) back to Debian and Ubuntu. Since Mint is based on both of them and benefits from them. Mint Community please don’t make this about the Debain or Ubuntu distro it’s self! its merely showing support for the Mint heritage. support for the projects mint is based on. without them mint would not be what it is today. great.

@JD : You are a great persuader. Let the Clem put it before community, if he wishes so (to see what’s the community reaction), or otherwise, he can secretly donate (out of love and support) To me no problems there.

Regarding Ubuntu and Gnome it was my personal view.

Something has to go on between you and me, so that we can keep exchanging ideas. Hope you won’nt mind.

Ok, so, is it possible to not to use Ubuntu or Gnome, so the question of giving donations to them may not arise.

Oh bobby! what will you do now? Now you are in trouble. How will you come out of this @JD’s Ubuntu and Gnome Web. I think, I should start using KDE (Debian or some other distro) so the question of giving donations to Ubuntu and Gnome may not arise, at least from my angle. ha ha ha ha, don’nt take it seriously @JD just joking. Who knows perhaps I may be already using KDE.

Any way it was a good experience talking to you. If anything I said hurt you, accept my apologies for the same.

@All: I can see really good points left, right and center in your comments, but please have a look at the post again. Think of all the people who came to help us, it’s inspiring. Let’s not argue about whether Ubuntu is worthy of donation or not, let’s not argue over money, the reason we’re receiving it in the first place is because we’re focused on our dev, so let’s not lose focus here.

@Bobby: We didn’t suddenly decide to spend money on GNOME, we took control of a revenue stream, within Linux Mint, which was controlled by Canonical. This revenue, in previous versions of Mint, went to Canonical (75%) and GNOME (25%). It’s now shared equally between Linux Mint (50%) and Gnome (50%). So this change should eventually (when the implementation is better, but that’s technical) send twice as much money to Gnome than it got before, but we’re not spending more money, this makes financial sense for us too. It’s also consistent with our policy on upstream revenue streams. We’re entering new markets, finding new ways to fund ourselves, making more money than before, but we’re happy to share some of it with partners or upstream projects which are helping us do that.

Thanks for a great discusion. You all seem like great community members And I meant nothing personol my friends, Its was great to discuss this with those of diffrent views . I just wanted to put the idea out there. And intially its was dissmissed without thought So I had to get somewhat defensive to put it out there

@Clem , You do great work on mint! Thanks for the great feedback. Onece again I would like to
say I was only suggesting an Idea and do
what you feel is right. I ment nothing personol clem

@bobby
I totally understand. Use and support what you like best not to inpose a “Web” haha.

To all who feel like Clem needs Community “consent” for the decisions he makes:

Synonymous with consent is permission. Are we really saying that Clem needs permission from the community to develop and donate how he wishes? I think not. Remember that the community represents vastly differing viewpoints on what Clem should do with ANYTHING involving Mint. Just take a look at the blogs.

If by “consent” you mean: Clem must “consider” what is being posted by the community, than that’s only slightly better, because Clem doesn’t have to even “consider” anything on these blogs. It’s his choice what he decides to do with anything. On the other hand, we could discuss whether or not it would benefit Clem to “consider” community input. But that would be tremendous time wasted, because we know full well that Clem pays very close attention to the blog, and he knows well the benefits of doing such–although, again, he bears no obligation in this regard.

As an example, Clem didn’t get my permission or consent, to release Mint 12 when he did. He doesn’t need my permission or consent, nor does he need the permission or consent of anyone else. If you truly don’t like what Clem does with donations, that is another reason for you to consider moving on. Making suggestions is one thing, although the value of such is still questionable. But if we feel compelled to make suggestions of any sort, let’s make sure that we aren’t giving Clem or the community the impression that he needs our express permission to do anything. In other words, let’s make sure that they are indeed suggestions.

That being said, please take a look at the dictionary from time to time before you post. I mean that with all good intentions. We can quickly give the wrong impression if we use words that we’re not completely familiar with, and it is valueless to Clem and the team if we make “demands” that simply aren’t ours to make.

Sorry for the long posting but I forgot to include this seemingly small but profound detail. If you don’t get your way with the suggestions you make on the blog, this does not mean that Clem is not “considering” your input.

@PB : It seems, I have to quote your own words. Someone is talking to me without taking my name. Let me first clear one thing, Yes I am not a Scholar like you. And perhaps my English may not be upto your standard, or may be near to you. But I have a right to express my opinion. Speak what I want.

That said, something else was going on at above posts, the background of which you don’nt know. First understand the background and then speak. Whatever I written up there have no meaning (whether it is consent or Ubuntu or Gnome). Clem and GR might know, why I have written all these things. So just going on the words I have written and expressing your opinion, without knowing the background, is not your fault.

Otherwise also, I know I am gon’na lose to you, if I argue on any subject or words to you. So already hands up. You won. I accept whatever you said is right.

To be sure, I didn’t mean to imply that this is a shooting contest, or that you should just take what I say as gospel. I understand that not everyone speaks English very well also. That’s why I said that I meant my post with all good intentions. You do have the right to express your opinion, and you even have the right to make demands if you want. And it wasn’t just your post that I was referring to. There are several posts that convey somewhat of a demanding message. I think we need to avoid that completely. I have been very vocal about that because, even though we may have a right to express our opinion, it is counter productive to voice our opinions in the form of demands. We can’t possibly expect good results

Just remember that our choice of words can be critical to the actual message that is conveyed. I do not consider myself a scholar on any level, but if I can offer constructive comments on word choice, then I will. I’ve been using Mint for some time now, and even though I’m not on board with Mint 12, I want Clem to know that I appreciate what he is doing, and will offer constructive comments if I can. This will include offering advice to other posters, as Clem does not need this blog to be a source of discouragement.

@PB : You are right when you said “choice of words can be critical”. And I already accepted that my English is not good. So now onwards before giving any feedback or writing comments, I will first refer it to you and if you find any mistakes, you are most welcome to correct it. I don’nt mind. I will also learn something. Perhaps others will also like to be guided by you.

“Not on board with Mint-12″, Wow! Still you said :”Clem does not need this blog to be a source of discouragement”. Great PB, its great writing only you can go from negative to positive. That’s why we admire you. Now I am sure, my English is gon’na improve in your guidance. Thanks.

My thoughts about not being on board with Mint 12 are not at all meant to be taken negative. I am running Mint 9 and I absolutely love it. I can not express that enough. I personally have no need to change, and I would rather wait to see what happens in future releases of Mint. I try to keep the big picture in focus and recognize that Clem’s great work is plainly evident in what I am already using.

Rather than make demands to Clem that he add this and take away that from Mint 12, or make an issue out of his choice of donations, I would rather wait and see what happens, all the while expressing my confidence that something in future releases will be worth upgrading to. True, I have mentioned my specific concerns with the direction of Gnome, but I have not allowed myself to be thoroughly disgruntled. Just because I haven’t committed to Mint 12 does not mean anyone should take this as a negative spin. It is quite the opposite. And I sincerely hope that Clem does not regard my decision to stay with 9 as a source of discouragement.

@PB: I know you are a perfect man. That’s why only you know (Not on board with Mint-12) others demands to add this and take away from Mint 12 is wrong. Even if the persons who are using the Mint 12, giving feedbacks, and helping the Clem to get it stable. All wrong. And how intelligent “I would rather wait and see what happens, all the while expressing my confidence that something in future releases will be worth upgrading to”. That’s our PB. Oh, I forgot you are helping Clem. Sorry again, its a great help.

Again regarding topic of “donations”, something else was going on there. But you can understand all the things, without knowing the details. Again, that’s our Great PB.

Wow! What great messages you gave in your posts. Highly polished English. We are obliged being with you.

Lastly, you can correct anything, in my posts my English is bad. I hope you will appreciate I am learning through you.

Its time for good night. You can post, I will read it tomorrow. After all I am learning.

I don’t know about you, but I’m lost. I can’t figure these guys out. I sense the same confusion on your end with post 103. I guess all I’m supposed to do here is complain whenever I see something I don’t like. How about you?

I’m directing this to you, because you and I have a similar outlook on open source. I’m really not sure what to make of post 121, although if I didn’t know any better, I’d think there were several accusations intermingled.

At the risk of sounding like a martyr, I will defer to your function. It appears that what I perceive to be contributions to the cause, are in fact being viewed as offensive to various posters. I promise that this is not the intent, but that matters little. My effort is quite possibly doing more harm than good. That being said, please feel free to censor any of my future posts that can remotely be perceived as offensive.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t fault others if English is not their primary language. But I scarcely think that painting “polished English” in a bad light is any less offensive. Besides, I don’t view my posts as polished English–rather, just plain English.

PB, your comments in here are for me the best ones by far, I learn from them and I congratulate you for your common sense. I don’t recall in the past so many arguments in this blog. Maybe we should calm down a bit, me included.

@PB : On Language : People are using Linux Mint all over the world. Mint community consists of persons of different country belonging to different mother tounge/languages etc. etc. Now my language is Hindi, some might be having Japanese and some French and so on. We all are gathered/asked by Clem at Mint blog to help him by giving our feed back, comments etc. etc. Now, if we start writing in our own languages, in which we are expert, will Clem understand what feedbacks/ comments etc. we are giving. No “DICTIONARY/ TRANSLATOR” can offer 100% accurate meaning/ translation. For an English man he is just writing English, not translating anything. His English has to be accurate than us. Where we are first thinking in our languages and then transcribing it in English for the sake of helping Clem in whatever way we can. Clem is not a mother and we are not child (sitting in front of him), where mother understand her child even without speaking a word. We are sitting in different parts of the world. So whatever English we are gon’na write, it never supposed to be 100% accurate. It is only for the purpose of Clem to understand we are communicating or what we want to say. Clem does not have any problem. In fact some users wrote comments in their languages, Clem out of love tried to translate it, but could able to translate it properly. So they were left. If somebody from other country writes in my language. The situation will be just opposite.

Now instead of appreciating, whatever way we are feeding/ commenting, somebody start pointing mistakes at our English. Which never was correct. It was only for the purpose that Clem may understand it. Wow!

Now at post 110 to 114 (and some earlier posts also) something was going on, which most of the Mint Community does not even have a clue. Still that ended on a very good note from post 112 to 114. Whatever was going on ended there. Then comes our PB (writing on Consent etc. and although I meant there ‘consent’ only, not anything else). But still as I know you don’nt have any clue what is going on, at Post 117 I agreed that it is not your fault, accepting whatever you said and expressed my reservations towards English.
Then comes you post 118, this is what pinched me “words can be critical to the actual message that is conveyed” and “I appreciate what he is doing, and will offer constructive comments if I can. This will include offering advice to other posters, as Clem does not need this blog to be a source of discouragement”. As if only you are bothered about Linux Mint. One is just sitting and waiting for LM-13, but he is helping Clem. The persons helping Mint-12 to reach upto Mint-13 all are at fault in some way or the other. Great!

Now in view of my above explanation on language, we will be obliged if you can see which words are critical and what messages are conveyed. Clem will be glad to take you r help. Only you can do it. And you are right about polish. Obliged!

And lastly in my view, It’s the heart which should meet not language, which is why we/I were/was here at Linux Mint, till now (now onwards I have to think about it, as I don’nt want to give wrong messages).
Thanks PB.

So what should I do now, I think “I would rather wait and see what happens, all the while expressing my confidence in Clem (why should I unnecessarily bother about LM-12 and give feedback) that something in future releases will be worth upgrading to”. Thanks PB once again. See you in future.

I have just seen that Kubuntu released an alpha for 12.04. You are working on a new Mint in KDE version. Will that be based on 11.10 or will you wait until next year April/May and release an LTS version based on 12.04?
Personally I would prefer the 12.04, but that is totally personal. There are 2 reasons for that. One is that at this moment I don’t really need a new OS, but more importantly it will give you/Mint-team more time to make a really great and rock-stable release.
When you will release an 11.10 based version will you have another release next spring? The 12.04 will be LTS with 5 year support, and to be honest I am looking forward to that. I really hope Mint will do the same so I will return to Mint. At the moment I use Kubuntu 11.10.

I would like to formally apologize to you, because I have clearly offended you. This was never the intent. Sadly, I feel like it would be pointless to restate the purpose of my post. Tough break for me, because I’m really smelling like a turd in a punch bowl–to some of you at least.

manny@125,

You’re right, I think I need to shut up for a spell on this issue. It’s amazing how fast things get out of hand.

Now, on to less offensive things–I hope.

DeMus@127

I’m digging you’re idea about KDE. I’m really looking forward to what Clem has for us when he finally puts the ISO out there, but I would be willing to wait a gnat’s hair more if it means a better experience being built on 12.04. I got ants in my pants on this one. I think manny has got the bug too.

“MATE received critical bug fixes and is now much more stable than it was…The momentum it gained by being part of this release helped it tremendously…and it’s starting to attract developers. A website was created for MATE and the code is now managed by a team, which I joined as project manager. As MATE becomes more and more full featured and as it is gaining in stability, we’re considering releasing a dedicated MATE edition.”

Wonderful news Clem! MATE has taken a giant leap forward with you one their team. I am highly satisfied with Mint 11 and will use it until it’s no longer supported in Oct. 2012 at which time I hope a Mint MATE-edition will be ready for primetime.

@PB : Sorry from my side also, if I hurt you. I don’nt keep anything in my heart. We all love Linux Mint. That’s why we are here. I don’nt know whether you have noticed or not, even in my arguments with you, maximum time I used the word “OUR PB”. To me it means the person who is with me/ my side. Up till now on this blog (Linux Mint, perhaps since last one month) whether we are conversing with each other directly or to someone else, that’s give you some idea about the other person personality. No doubt we like you. That’s why the words were “OUR PB”.

Oh I forgotten……… just joking and was lightening the moment.
Good night.

Thank you for clarifying. I made a mountain out of a mole hill. I so did not pick up on the joking part.

To All,

I hope I make myself perfectly clear with this post. Since there are many people who–like myself–do not favor upgrading to the latest Linux Mint release at the present time, my goal is to help those people remember the options that we have and to not use this forum to make “demands” of Clem and his team. Obviously, this would apply to those who take such a position and make unrealistic demands of Clem and his team, and who do so in an inappropriate manner.

This would not apply to those who are already aware of the great choices we have, and are willing to wait it out, or to try things like KDE, XFCE, etc.

In other words, if the shoe fits, wear it.

I would like to stress in no uncertain terms, that if you are using Linux Mint 12 and are happy with it, fantastic. And more power to you for making valuable suggestions to help Clem improve it. I really really don’t think I ever even suggested one was in the wrong for using LM12, and providing constructive feedback to Clem for LM12.

It’s those who don’t like LM12, and continue to make sharp demands to Clem to add and take away things just because they say so that my posts are primarily directed to.

In reference to donations, I feel the same way as Clem who posted the following comment:

“@All: I can see really good points left, right and center in your comments, but please have a look at the post again. Think of all the people who came to help us, it’s inspiring. Let’s not argue about whether Ubuntu is worthy of donation or not, let’s not argue over money, the reason we’re receiving it in the first place is because we’re focused on our dev, so let’s not lose focus here.”

That’s from the horses mouth–sorry Clem. Who better than Clem to restate the purpose of this blog? I was merely trying to amplify what he had already clearly stated.

If this has offended anyone at all, then I am sorry you are offended, because there is an obvious misunderstanding. But I will not retract what I have posted, as I feel it has relevance.

I have stopped comparing Mint 12 to previous releases as it clearly cannot be and am happy to run GNOME 3/MGSE from the LiveCD. However it is unlikely I would install Mint 12 to a production machine.

Perhaps a better way forward would be to dress up XFCE to look identical to Gnome 2 porting Mint Menu/Themes etc. which I imagine would be more straightforward rather than expending resources on MATE which would allow extra development to be afforded to GNOME 3/MGSE.

@Guy : Yeh, Mint-12 cannot be installed on production machines. In fact many applications which used to run in Katya are not running in MGSE, but are running in MATE. I know Clem is putting all the hard work. Sometime I don’nt understand, how the users of Fedora and Opensuse are managing it. Mint-9 is the best.

“What is all this nonsense relating to languages. Its meaningless twoddle and entirely irrelative to the most important issue which is the future of Linux Mint.”

So I take it that our primary form of communication–that being language–has nothing to do with the advancement of Linux Mint?

If that is not what you meant, then please clarify.

@bobby

I hope you are seeing this. In an effort to polish up Guy’s English, I will state that “twoddle” and “irrelative” are not real words. Do you see how someone can totally get the wrong idea about what Guy posted?

@PB : I have to say sorry to you. Once again, I don’nt know whether you have noticed or not, in some of my posts, I quoted lines from your post writing that it is taken from PB. That shows my appreciation to you. So, let me do the honour once again, a line taken from your post, which I think in the current situation more suiting on me that is “I made a mountain out of a mole hill”. Sorry again.

I first thought of writing something to guy, but then, learning something from my arguments with you, which now seems totally ridiculous, gave up. One thing is certain, whatever difference of opinion or arguments we all are having, in the end, we all love Linux Mint and want to see its progress. Some express it by requesting, some by demanding and some in other ways. And behind, request, demand, adamant, its love for LM. That’s why we are here, otherwise we would have been on some other blog.

So, whats now, lets wait for KDE-RC Kubuntu based and help Clem to make it better than Kubuntu and other KDE distros.

Gnome3 & MGSE and certainly MATE do great here now after some tiny problem.

But I don’t yet and probably will never understand why the very functional and colourful Gnome2-panels (if you need it 4) had to disappear or why this is not switchable new/’old’.
Fully functional panels can be very handy, because they are out of the way of windows and don’t need much control to do the thing as we all know.

Via tips in the forum I could make a launcher for desktop-icons, thank God. But why is this not included? Very important. These interface-restrictions make breathing not so easy as it could be (for me anyway).

Why isn’t it randomly possible to put freely something on panels or on the desktop like one has to do when working on a computer??

The ‘favourits-list’ in overview (not configurable…) can’t be as long as one likes, because the Mint-menu can not really nice hold them and further it has no oversight. There has to be a better way to manage this, also in overview. The more favorites the smaller the icons.

Why the shift in the workspaces when in-between workspaces are made empty? I like a program to stay in the workspace I’ve put it in. Like in the old tiny wm-pager.

So I use MATE most of the time. Great Gnome2 form and stable enough for me!!
But not complete yet. Things are indeed missing, like Clem wrote.

I hope my remarks will contribute to an already (and again) great OS.

Mint 12 is a big relieve for me (and I think for a lot of Linux-users and it looks great!! :big-smile:

@JD and Ubuntu fan boys:
I see very clear, so you’re just a ubuntu fan boy can not stand to see how the small became more popular than the giant.
But I’ll tell you the secret.
Give the importance and attention it deserves our community.
You expect, run to tell your “friend” Mark and stop pouring your frustration in this blog.

I feel it is important not to create a distro. vs distro. situation here.

Although we celebrate Mint being the distro. of choice we should remember that without Ubuntu there would be no Linux Mint. (Pre Linux Mint Debian Edition of course)

Furthermore it should be remembered many Linux Mint users including myself cut their teeth on Linux with Ubuntu (in my case Ubuntu 6.10) and not working with Linux Mint until release 3.0 Cassandra. “Oh the heady days of Beryl” for me at least they are still missed.

Although many do not like the way Canonical develop Ubuntu re: Unity I feel the field has now somewhat leveled given the similarities between Unity and GNOME 3 to the extent Unity is debatably the more stable of the two Desktop Environments.

Good post. I’ll even go a bit further to say that LMDE is not completely free of ties to Ubuntu, as Ubuntu and Debian have a somewhat symbiotic relationship.

While the influence that Ubuntu has in LMDE is certainly not to the extent of the Main Edition, it is at least worthy of debate. But that’s for another blog.

The bottom line is simply this: Linux Mint has much to be thankful for, and in my opinion, it will be some time before they can truly be independent–assuming that this ever becomes a goal of Mint. They would even owe their independence to the giants of yesteryear should that ever come to pass.

It is also my firm belief that Clem knows full well his position throughout the development community. That being said, it’s the least of my personal concerns as to what he decides to do with the funding for Mint. All things considered, I’m confident he will do “the right thing” at any given time.

I put “the right thing” in quotes, because we must remember that “the right thing” comes in many different forms, as there is a turbulent sea of changes that continually flows, and it will do nothing but get more turbulent. That’s why I contend that it will truly be interesting to see what’s left after this whole Gnome 3/Unity storm subsides.

@Guy says: I feel it is important not to create a distro. vs distro. situation here.

you forget that the situation is already created, not by me.
not true that Mint would not exist without ubuntu, I’m sure the magic of Clem had been successful, even if he had chosen any other Distro basis. If you do not believe me, try LMD.
I love Linux, I’m have installed 6 Distros, the main best of them, except ubuntu, Unity lacks my hardware.

I’m going out on a limb when I say that what Guy meant is that Mint in it’s current state would not be here if it wasn’t for Ubuntu. If Clem decided to completely go it alone from the start, I don’t think it would be as advanced as it is right now.

This is not discrediting Clem in any fashion. It’s just that he would have the same hurdles to jump as any other developer who starts from scratch. It simply takes more time, and numerous other resources to develop from scratch. I feel that Clem is completely capable of doing that, but I also feel he would be half way down the list on distrowatch.com if he took that approach.

I was not suggesting a distro. vs distro. conflict didn’t already exist. What I meant was we really don’t need it over to the Mint Blog however the use of the term Ubuntu ‘fan boy’ is highly likely to produce such a conflict.

I work with both Ubuntu based Mint releases and LMDE. My point was as PB said #144 ‘is Mint in its current state’ in other words as most people know it as relatively few work with LMDE at present. However I am encouraged the number is growing.

Ubuntu is far removed from Pure Debian these days. I remember working with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and it was resonably easy to install a Debian Etch package.
The same cannot be said of Ubuntu 11.10 and Debian Squeeze or Debian Testing come to that. The only thing Ubuntu and Debian really share in common these days is the package management system.

You have been with Linux Mint for a lot longer than I, and with Linux for that matter. My first experience was with Redhat 9, and while it was an intriguing experience, it was nowhere near the experience I had with Elyssa, which of course was sometime later. I have to say, that was the turning point for me.

That being said, I simply can not speak for your experiences with the more “Debian” friendly days if you will. However, I will say that package management can easily be a make or break element of any distro. So there is at least some significance in the fact that Ubuntu does maintain that particular tie with Debian.

The following link perhaps gives support to my thought about Debian and Ubuntu having a symbiotic relationship. On the other hand, it could be total garbage. But it’s worth a look if you haven’t already done so. To be perfectly clear, this in no way bespeaks my like or dislike for Mark Shuttleworth. This is purely for informational purposes.

Interesting artical on the link you posted however I disagree with Mark Shuttleworth as he stated :

“Debian on its own, as an institution, could not be a partner for industry or enterprise. The bits are brilliant, but the design of an institution for independence implies making it difficult to be decisive counterparty, or contractual provider. It would be essentially impossible to achieve the goals of pre-installation, certification and support for third-party hardware and software inside an institution that is designed for neutrality, impartiality and independence.”

The Mint devs. have done precisely that with LMDE but he states it as ‘impossible’.

I’m not sure I fully understand your reasoning on that, but it appears clear to me that Mark was highlighting that the prime directive of Debian itself does not allow it to develop like Ubuntu and Mint have into the user friendly desktop. It is a position that Debian has taken. But with the interests of other developers such as Ubuntu driving Debian to a certain extent, then Debian can easily be built on, making the desktop more usable, all the while allowing Debian to maintain their position within the Linux community.

If what Mark said wasn’t entirely true, then perhaps Debian would be in the number one spot, and not Ubuntu and Mint. And I dare say that if Ubuntu had nothing to do with the direction of Debian, then Debian would be way done the list. Food for thought.

Whether or not Shuttleworth has lost focus is another discussion–one of which matters little to me at present. Some people are very passionate about that, and that’s certainly okay. But in the end, I’m sticking with what works, and not sweating the small stuff.

I’m new to Mint, having just reluctantly ditched Ubuntu following the upgrade to 11.10. Unity is a disaster from a desktop perspective – it seems to be trying to clip the users wings to provide a better match to tiny phone/tablet/netbook screens.

Nothing wrong with that – Linux will have to to flourish in these devices to survive as a user OS in the long run. But why abandon the mainline desktop in the process?

I’ve read through quite a bit of this blog, much of which is over my head as I am not familiar with the background to it, But it does strike me, after reading the arguments in this blog, that the one single essential thing which any open OS has to do to survive is to give users as much freedom as possible to tailor the desktop and OS to their own needs. Its the only way to please everyone.

You would have to do this through simple user choices, of course. Not everyone has the time, ability or desire to get very far into OS innards. I guess embedding such choices poses quite a challenge for folks who are trying to support distributions with minimal resources. The more freedom you give users, the more ways there are for them to screw things up, and the more work you need to make the system robust against this,

Having now tried Linux Mint 12 for a week or so, I quite like it, and have now installed it on three of my machines. Of course, I have not used any earlier Mint versions, so can’t make any comparisons with these.

What happened to the website yesterday. guys awesome release. Although I would like to ask a quick question about Gnome 3. Did you guys put anyway to clear out notify-send at the bottom when i use Xchat the notifications build up and clearing the one by one is difficult. Nice release guys awesome work.